Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) (37 page)

Neil screamed and ran back up the beach toward the tunnel. Right into my trap. Assuming it was there, but I had more important things on my mind at that particular moment.

I turned to say something to Mina. She was apparently already in motion, grabbing me in the nicest hug I’d gotten in awhile. A moment later, she was pressing her lips to mine and it was pretty easy to forget, well, everything. She parted from me. “You don’t smell so hot.”

“Says the woman who smells like County.”

“Thank you, Rabbit,” she said, using her pet name for me. “For doing whatever you’ve been doing. The little guy said that’s why I’m out.”

“What, I was going to let the woman I love rot in... why are you looking at me like that?”

Her voice was small, rusty. “You love me, huh?”

“Well, yeah. I thought that was assumed.”

She smacked my arm, and then she was kissing me again. She tasted like prison food and smelled like the inside of my high school gym locker, but it was the best kiss I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t have minded it lasting a couple weeks. “Guess I love you, too,” she murmured when we were finished. “Why are you dressed like you’re in a ska band?”

“I had to borrow some clothes from a clone.”

She shook her head, then nodded in the direction of the retreating Satanist. “What about him?”

“I have someone waiting in the tunnel for him, probably. It’s fine. We can keep making out.”

“Rabbit, no. He’s not using the tunnel.”

I looked. Sure enough, Neil was sprinting across PCH. “Goddamnit. Watch him,” I said, pointing to the beached Whale. “I think his gun is...”

“I got it! Just go, before the little guy gets away!”

I ran up the beach, slipping in the sand, my legs burning with every step. I know most people would equate it to running in a dream, but I never had those particular dreams. Instead it felt like trying to run through snot. When I finally hit the asphalt, it was a relief. I climbed the little hill of hard-packed earth and jumped the railing. A car whizzed by on the other side and I dashed to the on-ramp for PCH. Neil was below, making for his car in the parking lot. Brady sprinted for him from the street, apparently having just arrived. She was firing her weapon, the bullets hitting everything except Neil.

He slammed the door shut and the car roared to life. Brady leapt away, but Neil had no designs on her. He streaked toward the on-ramp, and me. I was in the middle of the road, spinning the Genesis Flail, playing chicken without a car. The on-ramp was a half-spiral. Neil, at the base, looked up and saw me. His face went from fear to glee in less than a second. The car screamed around the turn. The headlights haloed me. I swung the Flail over my head like Wonder Woman gearing up for a good lassoing. The car bore down on me. To Neil, I wasn’t Wonder Woman. I was a bug he was planning on splattering all over PCH.

In one motion, I threw the Flail and jumped. I sailed over the border at the side, hitting the slope down into the parking lot and rolling, throwing up dust and tweaking the hell out of my shoulder. Above, there was a deafening crash.

And then silence.

Brady was running toward me and I had a brief flash of terror. Was this a betrayal? I mean, it would be the right time for such a thing. “By the sculptor!” she breathed instead, gazing up at the ramp where I had been.

More footsteps, tapping up through the tunnel. It was Mina, running, Vassily’s ridiculous gold-plated pistol looking like a giant toy in her hand. “Rabbit?”

I got up, stretching. “Did it work?”

Brady pointed. Mina stopped, relief flooding over her features. I climbed up the little hill and had a look.

The Genesis Flail was buried in Neil’s bumper, right where I’d wanted it: on the collision sensor. Neil was slumped in the front seat, knocked out cold by the airbag. I yanked the chain, and with the protest of metal, the Genesis Flail came free. I pulled Neil’s unconscious head back from the bag. He was safely in dreamland.

“Damn. Didn’t break his nose,” I said.

Brady snaked in and popped Neil. His nose squirted bright red blood all over the airbag and he slumped back down.

 “It’s broken now,” she said.

“Uh... thanks. Listen, one last thing. Call the cops. Tell them you know where to find escaped Russian mobster Vassily Zhukovsky, and let them know they can also pick up Nicky Zorotovich at the same time.”

“You’re Nicky Zorotovich,” she said, confused.

I took the papers out of my pocket and showed them to Brady. “Not according to those.” Javier had done a great job with what I’d given him. I wiped my prints off them and tossed them into Neil’s car.

“What are you going to do now?” Brady asked.

“I’m thinking nudity, adult content, sexual situations, that kind of thing.”

“Ew.”

“Stay cool, Ingrid,” I said, heading down the slope.

“We... we’re okay, right?”

I grinned at her. “I think so. Long as you keep up your end of the deal.”

“I will.” She nodded, taking out her phone and calling the police.

I joined Mina in the parking lot. “I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you for that insanity,” she said, pointing to the car.

“Come on. That was awesome.”

“Who’s the stick?” she asked, looking up at Ingrid, who was speaking very intensely into her phone.

“Oh yeah. You never actually met her. It’s a long story... I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Fair enough.” She slid an arm around my waist as I walked her to VC’s car. Well, my car now. “What’s this?”

“Oh, Mina. You are not going to believe the week I had.”

We skirted the wreck of Neil’s car and rolled up PCH, Mina’s head on my shoulder, my arm around her, and we were gone into the night.

On the stereo: Nah, let her get some rest. She’d had a rough couple days.

NEIL AND VASSILY WERE ARRESTED THAT NIGHT
. It was all over the news, what with the Whale’s Bruckheimerian escape from custody. Neil barely merited a footnote in those reports, referred to, if at all, as “a low-ranking associate of Zhukovsky’s.” Of course, that wasn’t Neil, not legally speaking. Neil Greene was dead. He’d done such a good job faking his death that now that he wanted to unfake it, he was screwed. And besides, all the papers said he was Nicky Zorotovich, and the one thing everyone who had run into Nicky over the past week remembered was that Nicky’s nose was broken. Thank you, Ingrid Brady.

I followed the trials with a little interest. Vassily was returned to San Quentin with another twenty years tacked onto his sentence for the escape and the injured deputies involved. Neil was sentenced later, for the racketeering and loansharking he’d put on me, along with aiding a fugitive. Sorry, Neil. Sad part was, I’d done such a good job on the alias, the courts thought “Nick Zorotovich” had a real record.

 Three months later and they’re cellmates in San Quentin, where Neil’s main hobby is trying not to get eaten.

That’s a little unfair, isn’t it? Three months in the future without mentioning any of the sympathetic characters? You’re probably worried about Oana. I know I was.

Mina and I spent the night at my place. It was already Friday night, and that’s date night. The weird part is, she seemed to think the adventure on the beach was a good date. Apparently, she thinks the whole noir anti-hero thing is a turn on. It does finally explain what she’s doing with me, at least. Anyway, as I was telling Mina the story and we got to Oana’s part, Mina said she should really call her. And then she did. Had Oana’s information the whole time. Yeah, that might have been handy.

Ingrid Brady still thinks I’m a wizard as far as I know. I stay out of her way, and I haven’t seen her, so I’m going to assume she’s staying out of mine. Hopefully seeing what happened to Neil will quash any ideas she has of trying the same bullshit later. If not, I guess I’ll deal with that when it happens. At least I didn’t send her any dickish presents this time.

I saw Heather Marie Tooms in a Lifetime movie called
Not Without My Uterus
about a woman who marries a Brazilian organ thief and has to later steal her babymaker back from the guy. It was not good. I found it on the DVR again and recorded it for Mina. She will not believe it.

On the other end, Rodrick Rand also went into television, playing the lead in a show called
Suck It
where he plays a heroic vampire. It’s terrible, but people seem to like it. Sometimes I see him make the exact same face he had when he was about to sacrifice me, and I just shake my head. Method actors.

 There have been a rash of reports of a man in a trenchcoat, scarf, hat, and gloves fighting street crime in LA. No word as to whether he smells faintly of clay. I blame myself.

The Sons of the Crimson Gaze seem to have mostly fallen apart, absorbed back into the same groups they originally poached from. Hollis Nguyen put on his play a few weeks after the whole thing wrapped up, and I went to opening night. Don’t worry, I wore a mustache. Mina did, too, which was both adorable and hilarious. The play left me with the intense desire to somehow create a live theater version of a midnight movie. Mina and I spent the whole time eating Junior Mints and trying not to fire them out our noses with laugh-rockets.

I moved back home. Well, not home-home. Mina sold her place in Silver Lake and we held onto my place up north and rented it out for extra cash. I sold the bookstore to Khaali, who passed her citizenship test. She told me she just remembered what I’d taught her and answered the opposite. I was so proud.

Mina and I got a place in Venice together, so I’m trying the whole cohabitation thing. You know, with more than just salamanders. It’s actually pretty nice. Everything smells good—other than the axolotl tank, because there is not enough potpourri in this dimension—which is a huge plus, and something I am not used to in the slightest. The axolotls spend most of the time on a faintly glowing rock with a rusted chain bolted to the side and they’re seeming a little... glowier these days.

Mina’s arrest had shown me I’d been stupid trying to run from LA. The city wasn’t going to let me go. Not after everything I’d seen. Hell, without me, there was no one to tell the old girl’s story. I knew the secrets like no one else.

Better to use it. I started placing coded ads in the same places I had once found jobs. Offering my services as a fixer, a freelancer, a detective. And wouldn’t you know it? I get calls. Granted, a lot of them are for horrifying sexual favors, which I politely, yet firmly decline. But I get actual jobs, too. Usually easy stuff. Well, easy for me. I can hear Mina:
Don’t get cocky, Rabbit
. But I look in her eyes, that secret twinkle that’s only for me, and I can see she kind of likes it when I do.

The money’s decent, and I’m doing something I’m good at. You can see me tooling around the City of Angels in a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado that still smells new. The Little Green Men never repo’d VC’s car, so it’s mine now. Call it squatter’s rights, or the execution of a nonexistent will. I was his best friend—he’d said it himself in that VC way of his—so I was going to keep his ride. I had it detailed and got it painted white and seafoam, because the black seemed a little too badass for me. I even had the guy paint a little pinup girl on the side. It’s no coincidence she basically looks like Mina with green skin and antennae, posing in one of those old-style bathing suits Mina modeled for Hepcat’s vintage line. The Caddy’s the Roswell Belle, and she’s starting to get known around town.

Along with Robert Blank, the magic man who fixes things.

If there’s one thing I learned from the experience, it’s this: you can’t outrun your past, but you can kick it in the ass every once in a while.

And sometimes that’s enough.

I have to thank my wife Lauri, without whom none of this would be possible. She believes in me even when I don't. She has supported me throughout this quixotic adventure into being a novelist, so if you like anything I've done, it couldn't have been managed without her.

I would also like to thank my friend and publisher Kate Sullivan. I'm not going into the lavish praise I heaped upon her previously just because I'm straying into restraining order territory. She's still amazing and I still admire her. I still count myself lucky to have entered her orbit.

And of course, I want to thank all of you out there who have championed my books. If you've left a review, if you've recommended it to a friend, if you've bought my stuff as a gift, you have done so much to help me. Indie authors like me live and die by ratings, reviews, and recommendations. Thank you for your time, your effort, and your support. Every time you do that, you help me write another book. You make it all possible.

Photo by Leora Saul